We chose to have our grillout on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and good thing too, because today, Monday, the actual Day, is pretty rainy & grey, while yesterday was gorgeous, sunny and not too hot.
My theme for the weekend menu was defrosting the freezer – accomplished on Saturday – using up last summer’s frozen stuff – and using up veggies from my first CSA box.
So, on Sunday we ate:
Corn salsa & chips, frozen corn from last summer, radishes from CSA, plus tomatoes from the Farmers Market, pickled jalapenos from a jar, and onions & cilantro from the co-op.
Potato salad – potatoes and green garlic from CSA and spring onions from the Market
From the freezer, two Pork Shoulder roasts, from Waisman’s pigs, one with a dry rub that had coffee in it, and the other with jerk. They got a little too charred on the outside, but every scrap was eaten.
Spinach casserole, with hot pepper cheese from the freezer, from the sweet potato quesadillas I never made at the cookie party, and a giant bunch of spinach from CSA – and when that didn’t seem like quite enough after it cooked down, I threw in some of the argula, too.
Strawberry rhubarb trifle – with extra berries that Nathan & Grace brought over.
On Sunday morning, I made the corn salsa and the spinach casserole and the potato salad, and then biked over to the east side and had coffee and a cinnamon spiral of croissant dough at Madison Sourdough.
Mark had observed that our coffee place of choice in Chicago, Dollop, was using big napkins on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, instead of their usual little square recycled ones, and so was Madison Sourdough. I think they were leftover from catering jobs.
Saturday, like I said I defrosted the freezer. I biked to the farmers market – got there too late and it was too crowded, but fun anyways. I ran some car errands, and marinated the pork, and made rhubarb puree and then the trifle. And I biked to the library to pick up some holds. For dinner, I had a big salad with roasted vegetables on top of greens, and a little sample cup of trifle.
Roasted vegetables – asparagus from my CSA, and potatoes, carrots, and broccoli from the co-op and the Farmers Market, on top of greens from CSA.
Trifle leftovers
I’m going to make these Mexican – or L.A., really – hot dogs for dinner tonight. When we were in San Francisco for the 2015 library conference, which was the same weekend as the Gay Pride parade and when gay marriage became legal, there were street vendors selling them, as described in the NYT recipe: they were cooked on a sheet pan over a propane burner, or other heat source. They looked so good, but somehow I wasn’t able to have one. I maybe think I was in a hurry to go get the zip car and pick up my “date” and head to one of the Grateful Dead Fare Thee Well shows that I had tickets for. I’ll let you know how my home version comes out.
Mexican hotdog. I had mine with the works – roasted jalapenos, sauteed bell peppers & onion, corn salsa (in lieu of pico de gallo, mustard, mayo, ketchup. Mark left off the jalpenos & salsa; Anna carefully peeled off the bacon, ate the plain dog on a bun with ketchup, and then ate the bacon.